Crack cast brings Rebecca Miller's fine PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE to fruition

Of all the truly inde-

pendent filmmakers around these days -- people who take their visions and run with them, whether the audience follows along or not -- if you'd asked me which one would make a movie so simultane-

ously artful and accessible that it could qualify as an almost perfect exam-

ple of "independent-mainstream," Trust-Movies would never have suggested Rebecca Miller (shown, left). What -- the lady who gave us Angela, Personal Velocity and The Ballad of Jack and Rose? Good films all, but quirky, personal and just a little too odd for everyday. Yet with her latest, THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE, she's done just that.

This is a work that should rivet intelligent "art film" audiences, coast to coast, including the midwest and Florida -- plus Hawaii and Palin-ville. A feel-good movie that seldom feels like one as it bobs along, Pippa Lee gets you to that happy point in sometimes the strangest manner (you're laughing, even as you shiver). It also provides a screenplay and dialog that are witty and smart without trying too hard. Ms Miller is intelligent, all right, but she doesn't feel the need to rub our noses in it. We can relax and enjoy because there are plenty of surprises along the way, along with clichés usually upended --
and quite juicily, at that.

Sporting a cast diverse and accomplished, in which every member -- from the younger set (Blake Lively) to the older (Alan Arkin and Shirley Knight) -- does yeoman work, and a situation sure to command attention from at least half of the audience (a woman who's spent her life making people happy begins to address her own needs), Pippa Lee is a shoo-in for gals and might also provide an enjoyable learning experience for guys -- if they give it a chance. Miller has adapted the movie from her own novel, and it's full of delicious dialog: the on-target dinner party that opens the film with conversation and feelings that jump so believably from one subject to the next; the mother who says of her offspring, "My son was always sort of... half-baked." (Ms Knight -- shown above, left -- offers this one up, inflected to perfection.)

Basically a sad story, but one told with much humor, Pippa Lee is constantly zipping back and forth in time. We see a lot of this in films, but it is handled so well here that it keep us on our toes without confusing us. And where symbols are concerned, Miller has a lovely, light touch: "I don't want to make butterfly lamb anymore," notes Pippa, with a rueful blend of hope and disappointment as played by a very good Robin Wright Penn (shown above, left, with Mr. Arkin and two photos above, right). Roles like this don't come around all that often, and Ms Penn grabs it and carries it home. While there's been some talk of a Best Actress nomination, the film is such a finely tuned ensemble (it should win a few ensemble-cast awards) that it is difficult to single out anyone for praise without mentioning them all.

Miller and her casting director Cindy Tolan have beaten the bushes, roped in a cast to die for and then given each a great role to work with. Arkin is always fine, but here he get to show a side we've haven't seen: a sophisticated, powerful (and thus sexy) older man who's always been a chick-magnet and does not like to see this ability disappearing with age. The actor captures so much in this role -- intellectual and marketing "smarts" plus that undying sense of male prerogative -- that it makes his award-winning performance in Little Miss Sunshine seem almost one-note (but played very well). An actor like Mike Binder, while cast to type, does his thing then adds something extra. Winona Ryder (above), too, shines bright; it's good to see her working with an ensemble like this. Monica Bellucci, shown below, center, and gorgeous as ever, has but one scene: a knockout that she makes unforgettable.

Robin Weigert and Julianne Moore appear briefly and steal the film for their time on-screen with Ms Lively (best-known for TV's Gossip Girl), who manages to hold her own in this starry company very well, thank you. If I were to give an award, however, it would go to Maria Bello, shown below, as Pippa's mom. Yikes. Another actress who's consistently wonderful, she does it again as one among only a few movie mothers who deserve to take a place in our permanent memory. Ah, yes: and Keanu Reeves. Of late (Something's Gotta Give, Thumbsucker, Street Kings), Mr. Reeves -- shown in photo at bottom, with Ms Penn -- has been doing work that is said to be a revelation. Is it possible that we didn't appreciate him in his earlier career, or have recent directors discovered how better to use him? Either way, he's a revelation once again. Miller puts his stolidity to great use: He's big, buff, sexy and real without pushing. Maybe middle age becomes him.

By the end of Pippa Lee, this critic was in the kind of giddy, benighted mood that only a really satisfying film can produce. Even rising from my chair and feeling the arthritis kicking in didn't phase me. Higher praise I cannot give. Except to say that the film's finale offer something truly original, hilarious and pertinent to our funda-
mentalist times. Has there ever been a better use of Jesus on film? I think not.

Opening via Screen Media (a company that's more and more on the radar these days: the fun Women in Trouble appeared a couple of weeks back and the dark Death in Love a few months ago) in a lim-
ited, but not too small release in various cities around the country, playdates for The Private Lives of Pippa Lee can be found here.

Jaume Collet-Serra's creepy ORPHAN: schlock done right

Let's admit it: We need our schlock, some of us, at least. Our scares, our tin-
gles, our rub-ups against those things that go bump in the dead of night. If we are going to get them anyway (since Holly-
wood seems bent on serving 'em up more often than anything else), they should only be as classy, as much creepy fun as ORPHAN, a film that TrustMovies has come late to, given its

rather dismissive set of reviews.

The movie is written with a modicum of intelligence and wit by David Johnson (his husband/wife "fuck/bitch" exchange is really quite clever and truthful regarding how certain well-to-do young marrieds behave) from a story by Alex Mace. These two newcomers join the relatively new director Jaume Collet-Serra (shown, right: the man who gave us the not-terrible House of Wax remake a few years back), and they and their crew make smart use of their movie's probably rather small budget so that Orphan looks very good, while serving up scares with more foreboding & suspense than out-and-out shock & blood. When the latter arrive--and they do--they're given style, surprise and sass.

Orphan certainly deserves an "R" rating, especially because of its gleeful mash-up of relatively innocent children and truly horrible deeds, which makes the film all the more disturbing. That it is acted quite well, too, from its three leads on down, sends it up another notch. Collet-Serra and his scripters see to it that we're kept off-balance regarding just what is going on with the pretty but odd little orphan of the title, a role brought to terrific life by another relative newcomer Isabelle Furhman, who was but eleven years old when she made this film. Almost bizarrely poised and self-contained, Ms Fuhrman joins the happy family (above) then moves from sweet & tearful to monstrous & frightening then back again with enormous -- and more importantly, believable -- ease.

In the roles of her adoptive parents are two actors whose work I try never to miss: Vera Farmiga (above right) and Peter Sarsgaard (above left). Each has had better roles and will again but you never get the feeling that either regards this assignment as slumming. Both turn in specific and nuanced work that helps negotiate treach-
erous terrain as Ms Fuhrman's character (shown below -- yes, that is a blood-stained hammer in her little hand) pits one parent against the other while frightening her siblings into submission.

The plot itself is relative "hooey," but even here, the company -- including CCH Pounder as a conflicted sister at the orphanage and Margo Martindale as an analyst -- skillfully guides us along. Instead of having characters who manage one stupidly delayed action after another, these rise to the occasion more quickly than most. Just about the time you say, "Come on idiot: call the police!" they're doing just that. And when they don't turn on the light in the basement, it's because they can't.

I am not saying that Orphan is any kind of classic, mind you. But in a time when torture-porn seems to have taken over the scary-movie slot, it's nice to find a film that remembers how to scare us rather than gross us out, while keeping us riveted. A word should also be said for the excellent art work supposedly done by the title character; it's aces, as are some of the lighting effects (below) that render hidden meanings suddenly obvious. One of the pleasure of the film is how it builds mystery and suspense around the small things -- like that art, or the ribbons little Esther likes to wear around her neck and wrists, or her very private bathing routine -- all of them splendid replacement for the usual array of spilled guts, explosions and car chases. This movie is the work of many Quebecois, by the way, and if they can turn out films this professionally, then I say Vive les French-Canadians!

Orphan is available now on DVD from Netflix or your favorite video rental source, or for sale via Amazon and the like.

DVDebut: Gerald McMorrow's FRANKLYN blends sci-fi & psychology to good effect

For anyone a tad curious about FRANKLYN (and with Ryan Phillippe, Sam Riley (yes, from Control), Eva Green, Susannah York and Bernard Hill in the cast, how could you not be?), here's the scoop. Made in 2008 and released this week in the U.S. directly to DVD, the film is the first full-lengther to come from 39-year-
old British writer/
director Gerald McMorrow (at right), who acquits himself rather well for a first-timer.

His movie is very easy to look at, what with its particularly interesting sci-fi visuals that are just bizarre enough to merit attention. We're thrust into a very odd tale of a masked man (Phillippe -- below, center) who is set upon committing murder. Why and how we slowly learn, at the same time as we find ourselves in a seemingly alternate, present-day universe.

Initially religion appears front and center, with this appealing bit of narration to consider: Commoners believe religion to be true; wise men know it's false; rulers find it useful. It seems, in this weird land that looks and sounds something like London, any religion is just fine, so long as you have one. And there is a plethora from which to choose. (My favorite is the sect that a young woman says she's growing tired of: The Seventh Day Manicurists.) Soon, however, religion falls away and psychology takes over.

A mother and daughter (York, above, and Green) are having a traumatic time in the therapist's office; elsewhere, a young man (Riley -- below, right -- with Green) has been stood up at the altar, while an old man (Hill) is searching in vain for his missing son. All this will coalesce, but not before a lot more has been tossed into the mix. Were it not for the very game cast that makes each moment believable, we might lose interest. But no, we soldier on. While the scenes set in present day command our attention by virtue of the performers, it's the look of the sci-fi section -- costumes, sets, lighting and the lot -- that consistently perks us up. Cinematography is by the excellent Ben Davis (Incendiary, Layer Cake), the production design from Laurence Dorman, and the art direction via David Doran, James Wakefield and Jan Walker.

If the plot strands seem initially far apart, they come together in a more nuanced and complex manner than we're used to. Eventually we begin to understand what is happening and why.Then the movie goes wildly, crazily romantic -- and damned if that doesn't work, too, because previously it has all seemed so dark and strange that we somehow welcome this surprising change.

I can understand why Franklyn was deemed not-ready-for-prime-
time release but that doesn't mean it's not worth a watch at home. The fact that it manages to incorporate the middle east and post-
traumatic stress syndrome -- among its many threads -- and does so in an inventive way that never cheapens things -- is quite a feather in Mr. McMorrow's cap.

Park's THIRST and Jarmusch's LIMITS OF CONTROL: See 'em for the amazing visuals

TrustMovies rarely recommends a movie based purely on its visual appeal. Yet two new-to-
DVD films have ap-
peared this week that absolutely merit that advice. Though both are perfectly OK (if a little been-there/
done-that) in the story department, their "look" -- the colors, composi-
tions, and all-round visual flair -- is such that I believe any-
one who prizes what beauty and and originality can bring to a genre film will appreciate either of these two treats.

Within his much-commented-upon deadpan style, Jim Jarmusch has managed to work in an interesting array of genres, from crime to ensemble comedy, romance to western. His latest, and certainly the most beautiful color film the fellow has yet given us, is in the "thriller" mode. You might call THE LIMITS OF CONTROL the Jarmusch answer to the Bourne movies but, of course, a lot slower-paced. Which is fine, because this gives your eye plenty of time to pop, pop, and pop again.

This movie has been art-directed and production-designed (by Eugenio Caballero) to within an inch of its fragile life. But because the art and design are so accomplished, there is neither a moment nor a frame that is not glorious to view. And I don't mean that it's forever calling attention to itself. Rather, it moves along in stately fashion, while the eye of the cinematographer (Christopher Doyle: Are you surprised?) frames and captures the enormously varied and splendid locations (by Albert Proveda), from a men's room to a museum, a train to a vast plain.

The cast offers a study in international stardom, from Britain's Tilda Swinton (above) and John Hurt to Spain's Luis Tosar and Paz del a Huerta (below), Japan's Youki Kudoh, Mexico's Gael García Bernal, Israel/Palestine's Hiam Abbass and America's Bill Murray to name just a few. In the lead is one of the most beautiful actors to grace the screen, the Ivory Coast's Isaach De Bankolé (shown two photos up), whose amazing face is a study in gorgeous, dark planes and cheekbones to die for.

Using few words, most of them oft- repeated, he com- mands the screen via his quiet strength and classy suits worn so well (to get a more hu- mane sense of the man, see the under- rated movie The Guitar). If The Limits of Control has little plot and the capper smacks of red state/ blue state division, it works well enough to carry us along, murmuring quietly, again and again, "Just look at that!"

South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-Wook's latest to reach our shores, the nouveau-vam- pire flick THIRST, is another lesson in how cleverly chosen and created visuals can add immense pleasure to, as well as ringing changes on, a genre as old and often dog-eared as the blood-sucker movie. What especi- ally sets Thirst apart from others in the genre is that it's "hero" is a priest, carrying along with him all the fun Catholic guilt you might expect. And if the wordplay of vampire priest doesn't quite have the delight of Nazi zombie, never fear: Thirst is ten times the movie that Dead Snow wishes it was.

Mr. Park seems to divide critics. I come up almost wholly on his side, for I love his way of merging big themes (the uses and wastes of vengeance) with can't-take-your-eyes-off-'em visuals. His foray into the vampire genre is no exception. Thirst is in some ways as much a film noir (deceit, guilt and a femme fatale play an enormous part in the proceedings) as a Dracula-clone.

As usual with genre movies, it's what the writer/director does with his material that counts, and Park does a lot. From his use of fantasy fears and dreams (even vampires can be afraid -- something that I don't think we've seen before, and certainly not like this: the waterlogged coffin, for instance) to his take on the vampire's avoidance of daylight (can't have it? OK: we'll paint the walls white and install a lot of fluorescents!), the filmmaker offers originality that goes a step farther while still making sense.

Park keeps his sense of humor about him, too. Toward the end as events rise to the expected climax, that humor keeps bubbling up, mixed with feeling and sadness. As usual, we sympathize with our vampires even as we know they must perish. The finale is a wonderful mixture of odd humor, graphics both wild and beautiful (a shot of whales at sea is simply unforget- table), and splendid reticence (the final shots crop an old cliche into a resonant image, brilliantly reduced). What a movie-maker this guy is!

MAMMOTH? Even with the likes of Michelle Williams and Gael García Bernal, it's puny.

My vote for the worst, the most obvious and boring film of the year so far -- and we're awfully close to the end of it -- (besides von Trier's Anti Christ, which I must, as I'm sure Lars would want, relegate to a class all its own) -- would be the twenty-ton tiddly-wink from Lukas Moodysson, shown below, entitled MAMMOTH. (When you find out the reason for this title, the movie will sink yet another notch into the mud.) The writer/director's first film in English (and Tagalog!), it wastes the not inconsider-
able talents of performers like Michelle Williams and Gael García Bernal while putting forth several knock-your-socks-off messages such as Parents Should Be With Their Children, Poverty is Wrong, Conspicuous Con-
sumption Is Naughty and other truisms demonstrated with a shocking lack of film-making skill.

Moodysson began garnering international renown with two fine films that were funny, moving and real: Fucking Amal (called Show Me Love on this side of the Atlantic) and Together. He then moved into the realm of dark and vicious "reality" with two terrible movies -- Lilya 4-Ever and A Hole in My Heart -- weirdly, utterly negative in the kind of programmed manner that leaves no room for alter-
natives: Pollyanna in reverse. While it is nice to have the writer/
director working again in the realm of mixed positives and nega-
tives, Mammoth is bad enough to make you wonder if you'd over-rated his early efforts.

The movie begins with a happy family scene (above) that, while real enough, lacks specificity in the dialog department and goes on for such a duration that you begin to wonder if there is some hidden code you should be breaking. Once the plot (such as it is) kicks in, we quickly realize we're getting dual scenarios of parents and children, gifts from the haves and have-nots, kids-in-danger (west and east variety), and more. As the movie shuffles along, it appears that Moodysson is simply unloading on us literally everything interesting that he knows, and the film soon becomes a lecture/lesson rather than real drama.

If you'd told me last week that I could sit through anything featuring Williams (Synecdoche, New York; Wendy and Lucy; Incendiary) and Bernal (Y tu mamá también, The King, Vidas privadas), and come out of it imagining that neither was a good actor, I've have said you were crazy. Yet both performers are unable to rise above dialog that is utterly pedestrian and occasion-
ally embarrassing. I dare say that English is not Moodysson's first language, so was this dialog improvised perhaps? While Ms Willi-
ams (above), always honest and never pushy as an actress, is fine in repose -- her face mirroring so much -- she seems at sea in the several scenes around an operating table (she plays a surgeon).

For his part Bernal, shown at right, manages only to show us that goodness can bore the pants off an audience. (How differently that goodness is expressed by Señor Bernal here than in Walter Salles' fine, fascinating and so very specifically detailed Motorcycle Diaries.) The supporting cast, led by Marife Necesito, as the couple's nanny, does a good enough job but it too, is defeated by the writer/ director's penchant for consistently telling and showing. His single stylistic touch -- the deliberate separation of dialog from visuals -- is of little help. By the close of the seemingly endless 126-minute running time, you can be forgiven for asking, as did I, "This really is all there is?"

Mammoth opens via IFC Films on Friday, November 20, at NYC's IFC Center, while making its On-demand debut yesterday, November 18. You can check your local TV reception provider, and if it offers IFC On-Demand, click on that and scroll its various movies. Or click here, scroll down a bit, and enter the proper information to determine if your local area is being served.

Noah Buschel's THE MISSING PERSON opens; Shannon, Ryan & Colin shine

Boy, does tempus fugit. Seems like only yesterday that one of our (& many others') favorite actors, who has only been on the radar for the past three or four years, is already deeply into middle age. Michael Shannon -- who seemed to appear out of nowhere in Bug (even if you despised that movie, as I did, it's hard to nay-say Shannon's perfor-
mance) and then drew more notice in

Shotgun Stories and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, finally garnering an Academy nomination for his work in Revolutionary Road -- has actually been working (as Mike Shannon) in TV and in films like Jesus' Son and Cecil B. De-
Mented since the early 1990s.

More haggard and bleak than his 35 years would indicate, Shannon looks like shit in the new film by Noah Buschel (shown at left) called THE MISSING PERSON. Yet he provides both center and ballast for this tale of an alcoholic private detective given a bizarre missing-person case which ends up producing not just a solution but a kind of solace for him and almost everyone else involved in the film's twisty plot.

For a would-be, hard-boiled detective movie, this one has the feel but not the look of film noir. There's little shadow and darkness on view; the shot of actress Linda Emond, right, is one of the rare visual "noir-ities" present. In fact, whether due to budgetary restrictions or directorial choice, the cinematography often looks a little light and bleached (like the shot of Shannon with John Ventimiglia, below). The dialog, Chandler-esque but not slavishly so, is smart, crisp and sometimes funny, and the film also offers a lovely, surreal dream sequence that packs an interesting mix of family history, psychology and beauty into its short space.

The Missing Person is an odd -- and oddly graceful -- movie: mysterious, all right, but almost without villains. Its characters tend to be damaged, though not beyond repair. The plot, like certain other famous noirs, doesn't always make sense in any straightfor-
ward way. Yet it coheres emotionally, and in its use of 9/11, the movie does things that few other films have yet managed (The Great New Wonderful is one such). Although that dreadful day is a kind of disguised centerpiece here, Buschel comes to it only glancingly so that the effect is one of gradual surprise and feelings-pieced-together rather than any big-league emotional event.

The movie makes use of a wonderful jazz score (the musical supervision is by Jim Black), and Buschel seems himself a kind of jazz filmmaker: eliptical, moody, with a nice sense of humor and fun. And his cast does him proud. Shannon, on-screen most of the time, carries his weight beautifully, leading us along with him as he learns and grows. The women in his life are played by the wonder-
ful Amy Ryan (shown at bottom) and Margaret Colin (shown below with Shannon). Frank Wood lends oddness and gravity to the title role, Emon handles her few moments with expected perspicacity as his wife, Ventimiglia is aces (as usual) as a helpful cab driver, and Paul Sparks makes a credibly conflicted best friend.

It's tempting (and easy) to oversell a movie like The Missing Person. Rather, I'll just suggest that you try it. It left me in a very happy state, a few inches off the ground from the sheer pleasure of seeing such a tricky project -- the neo-noir detective film -- handled so unusually and so well.

Strand Releasing -- from whom the hits just keep on coming (my kind of hits, that is: small, interesting but little seen foreign and independent fare like Give Me Your Hand, The Wedding Song and Peter and Vandy) -- is releasing the film this Friday, November 20, in NYC (at the Village East 7), and a week later in L.A. (at Laemmle's Sunset 5). Appearances are expected to follow soon in: Irvine (also on 11/27), Detroit (12/18), San Francisco (12/25), Denver (1/8/10), San Diego (1/22/10), Chicago (2/12/10).

Tao Ruspoli's FIX opens in New York -- and Shawn Andrews hits the big time

If FIX, the snazzy and relatively new (it’s been kicking around the fest circuit for a year or so) independent movie by Tao Ruspoli (shown just below) reminds you of the Doug Liman film Go (Liman’s best by my standard), I wouldn’t be surprised if this was not intentional, maybe even some kind of homage. Ruspoli’s tale brings together a disparate group of characters (some of these quite disreputable), just as did Liman’s, but connects them in a much more straightforward manner. There’s a whole lot of traveling here, too, in and around the L.A. area by the three principals: a pair of documentary filmmakers played by Ruspoli and Olivia Wilde (shown below, right: she and Ruspoli are a twosome, or so this week’s New York magazine tells us) and the former's brother Leo, played by the real -- and unforgettable -- star of the movie, an actor named Shawn Andrews, below, left.

This extremely unwieldy brother is an evidently well-connected drug pusher and user who is about to face a long prison term unless he can be placed in a rehab center by 8 pm the evening of the day that Fix begins. Oh – and did I mention that a several-thousand dollar fee for this rehab center must be raised before our guy can be admitted? There’s the setup, and it’s a doozy, especially given the fact that brother Leo is high as a kite already and determined to somehow stay that way, while evading his fate.

Fix whisks us around Los Angeles, into its swanky, as well as its nether regions (above), and everywhere we go we meet weird, funny, scary people, who surprise, amuse and even occasionally move us during the increasingly bizarre turn of events. On hand in the delicious supporting cast are Megalyn Echikunwoke, Dedee Pfeiffer, Rodney Eastman and others -- all creating sharp, full characters with little screen time. If you took this film at all seriously -- which I admit that, other than its being an exceedingly clever piece of movie-making, I did not – you might say that it laid bare the soul of L.A., if not America: sleazy, lazy, addicted and corrupt. But, nah, it’s just a movie, and a fun one at that. Its style is fast, raucous and all over the place, yet it works quite well. There’s a discipline necessary in properly showing us characters and events as undisciplined as those we see here. No less than the oft-undisciplined Oliver Stone is quoted in a blurb praising the movie (it's the first one on the poster, top) and it’s easy to understand why. Stone has never given us a movie as much fun or daring as this little 90-minute wonder, and certainly not on anything as close to its minuscule budget.

Back to that cast: When you’ve got a performance as bizarrely energetic and crazy as that given by Mr. Andrews, everyone else necessarily takes a back seat, particularly his two cohorts. Wilde looks beautiful, as usual, but Ruspoli is barely seen, holding a camera as he attempts to record as much as possible of what we are viewing (this is a kind of doc-within-a-doc). But that’s fine because the two filmmakers on screen must act as reasonably and reliably as possible to offset the craziness of their charge. For his part, Andrews is a revelation, alternately frightening, funny and nuts but always quite smart. And self-defeating. In the one scene sure to divide audiences, we go into a drug den (shown, above) and get a lecture on living that intends to turn topsy-turvy our own ideas on life and death, right and wrong. I didn’t quite buy it, but I admit to being very impressed with Ruspoli’s brave and unusual attempt to convince us.

In any case, I recommend you get your Fix soon, and on the big screen. See what you think, and feel free to add a comment below. The movie opens Friday at New York City’s Village East cinemas, and depending on how well it is received by audiences and critics, it may well open wider in the weeks to come. In any case, it is certain to appear eventually on DVD and/or on one of those “streaming” links.